And so this situation is starting to get ridiculous - and consumers are, as usual, caught in the middle of it all. Google has just blocked Windows Phone devices from accessing Google Maps on their phones. In addition, it also seems Windows Phone users are now restricted to the basic HTML version of the mobile GMail website. While understandable from a defensive perspective - Microsoft's extortion scheme targeting Android device makers and all that - it's still a massive dick move that only hurts consumers. Update: the media attention has worked - Google is backpedalling, and will remove the redirect. "We periodically test Google Maps compatibility with mobile browsers to make sure we deliver the best experience for those users. In our last test, IE mobile still did not offer a good maps experience with no ability to pan or zoom and perform basic map functionality. As a result, we chose to continue to redirect IE mobile users to Google.com where they could at least make local searches. The Firefox mobile browser did offer a somewhat better user experience and that’s why there is no redirect for those users. Recent improvements to IE mobile and Google Maps now deliver a better experience and we are currently working to remove the redirect. We will continue to test Google Maps compatibility with other mobile browsers to ensure the best possible experience for users."

So you're saying that it effectively never happened? Time has moved on and the entire Web as it stands today would not be any further at the present time in a parallel universe in which Microsoft had not done it? Sorry, but I'm just not seeing it. Microsoft has set the web back YEARS, and it really hasn't been all that many years ago that some serious progress has been made after it finally got back on track. Microsoft never gave the Web all those wasted years back; it had to go through a painfully slow process of correcting itself.

I am not saying that, actually earlier version of IE actually advanced it better than netscape ...

Anyway, Google a WEB company playing tit for tat and using browser sniffing agents to make a WEB App not work deliberately is just as bad as what you were complaining about.

No, if you'd read I'm only saying: You get treated by others in the same (or similar) ways that you treat them. And this really is just a little slap in the face compared to what Microsoft has done. I even said "it may not be the best thing to do."

Oh so you are advocating tit for tat technological enhancement ... as I said anything but Microsoft.

Oh so you are advocating tit for tat technological enhancement ... as I said anything but Microsoft.

No, it's a natural instinct. It doesn't need to be advocated, it's natural and it already happens. Take the computers, technology, corporations, money, etc. away and replace humans with any other animal (or even a combination of different species) and you'll get the exact same results. That's just reality... what part of it is so hard to understand? I already pointed this out in my original post.

Its largely irrelevant if its poetic justice for Microsoft, it is detrimental to the web as a whole.

WebKit is as much as a threat to the web today as Microsoft was with IE back in the day.

And it really isn't WebKit's fault, they are victims of their own success and of the snails pace that the W3C moves at. This only serves to highlight a fundamental deficiency in this design by committee process.

Web developers really, largely, hold no allegiance. They will flock to whatever gives them the maximum coverage.

WebKit has a lot of functionality in vendor prefixed form, and using old implementations of recently updated specs. Again, a by product of the speed at which the W3C works.

Just as web developers naturally started developing for IE instead of for the web, the developers of today are targeting WebKit. On Mobile its defacto.

This normally wouldn't be an issue if the W3C didn't take 20 years for a standard because developers would have reasonably similar functionality across all of their browsers. But it does, and it is.

While Google's intent today may or may not have been malicious (I'll take their word that it was what they figured to be a sensible product decision), it does underscore a need to have a conversation about the state of the web.